I recommend having a long slow look at the graphic. Here are some hints to unlock its dense beauty.

How To Read This

Here are some hints on how to read this graphic:

This image is a “balloon race”. The higher a bubble, the greater the evidence for its effectiveness. The supplements are only effective for the conditions listed inside the bubble.

The size of the bubble represents how many Google search hits there are for this supplement. Don’t be fooled into thinking that the size of the bubble relates the effectiveness of the supplement; it merely shows how often people are looking for more information using the internet.

The creators have marked the some supplements in yellow, designating them as ones with low evidence, but promising results – cocoa, NAC, beta glucan, arginine, l-lysine, noni, astaxanthin and tumeric for eg.

You might also see multiple bubbles for certain supplements. These is because some supplements affect a range of conditions, but the evidence quality varies from condition to condition. For example, there’s strong evidence that Green Tea is good for cholesterol levels. But evidence for its anti-cancer effects is conflicting. In these cases, we give a supplements another bubble.

My Thoughts

I was surprised by how few bubbles contained a health condition. Could it really be true that so few supplements have been matched to diseases? Maybe that is exactly why the graphic is sub-titled Snake Oil.

Also interesting to see how many bubbles are located below the line marked “worth it”.

So one summary from this graphic is that the majority of supplements probably really are snake oil.

What Did You See?

A picture really is worth a 1000 words. So much information can be presented by one image.